Gaining Compassion

Started by tms, July 03, 2020, 02:44:30 AM

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tms

The more I learn about trauma and dig deep into my family history and genealogy, the more I realize that my parents were only living what they knew.  Yes, the domestic violence in my home throughout my entire childhood has given me lifelong cptsd and wrecked me in many ways, but as I have gotten past middle age, I have realized that at no point were they doing anything at all to deliberately harm me.  In fact, they loved me a lot.  THEY were also traumatized, wounded, poorly partnered, unhealed, and devoid of adequate coping skills.  This awareness has been so freeing for me, as I spent the first 45 years of my life marinating in a toxic ball of hatred and blame that wrecked my soul.  Now, they are elderly and I seem to "see" them anew, through an increasingly compassionate lens.  They still are quite toxic together and they trigger me sometimes, but when they do, I just go home and stay away until I am regulated again and ready to jump back into life with dysfunctional elderly parents in their last few years of life.  I hope to bring some dignity to this whole situation and to take the most painful part of my life and bring some grace and peace to it after all these years.  Is anyone else moving in this direction or on this journey also?  Can anyone relate to wanting to bring compassion to the very home in which your trauma was born?  And do you think this might be one way to stop the cycle of intergenerational trauma from getting worse, or am I deluding myself that this is even something to aspire toward? (going NC has never appealed to me, by the way). 

Blueberry

In a nutshell: No.

I am gaining a little compassion as I heal but I can and do have this feeling without acting on it in any way towards FOO, except by not making any passive-aggressive remarks. I have even lessened my passive-aggressive thoughts about them. That is a form of self-protection though. I'm doing it for me rather than for them.

Developing self-compassion is way more important for me.

Going back to FOO after being badly triggered caused me retraumatisations. They say you can't heal from cptsd while in contact with your abusers/neglecters. I thought for a long time that mine had changed for the better and I remained in contact and/or went from NC back into contact.

NC forever isn't my thing (yet) either, but I am VLC. I have learnt a lot on this over at our sister website e.g. here https://outofthefog.website/what-to-do-2/2015/12/3/boundaries

saylor

#2
This is something I've thought about a lot, so I'm glad to chime in.

I can see where finding compassion for one's abuser(s) could be very freeing and healing. I'm genuinely happy for you (and perhaps even envious) that you've been able to make such strides.

Both my parents are dead and I confess I still feel a great deal of anger about what they did to me, because every day of my life, I still have to deal with (in some ways, debilitating) symptoms of the trauma that I experienced at their hands. More importantly, my primary abuser (father) did deliberately harm me (he intentionally broke me in order to keep me in line and make parenting easier for himself). Furthermore, he not only expressed no remorse for what he did, and not only never acknowledged the harm he caused me and my sibling, but had the audacity to punish us for our eventual estrangement from him.

It's very hard to find compassion for him beneath all my anger, and I guess I don't feel an obligation to do so. I don't even know how I would fake that feeling... I think if he had handled things better at any point along the way, a door might have cracked open in my heart, but he dug his heels in 'til the end. How much should I have been expected to tolerate and then pretend like everything was ok, simply because maybe he, himself was damaged?

There seems to be a school of thought that anger is something that we actively cling to, and as such, we should "choose" to let go of it, if only for our own good. I fully believe that I'd be happier without feeling all this anger. I certainly don't feel like I'm trying to keep being angry. Rather, I feel like I'm still angry despite myself. If someone can provide a magic elixir to dissolve my anger, please send it my way!

Fun anecdote: I remember once, following one of the many times that he senselessly beat me, I worked up the immense courage required to mention that I felt he was being unfair to me. (It's quite remarkable that, as a small child in the wake of a beating, I would have found the audacity to question his authority, since I was so terrified of him, but somehow I managed to do it on this one occasion. Perhaps I'd finally reached a breaking point of sorts.) Anyway, he thundered back something along the lines of "Oh yeah? Well someday I'll tell you what was done to me!!!!" Call me crazy, but I don't find this line of reasoning compelling. He never did tell me what was done to him, by the way, but I'm not sure it would have swayed me. Whether or not I want to be angry (and I really don't), and whether or not the continuation of anger is harming me, I know that my anger was and still is justified. It doesn't have to be useful or productive in order to be understandable (and perhaps even inevitable). And who knows? I might be doing myself more harm if I swallow or deny justified anger.

I realize there are people in this world who would look down upon me for not cutting my father slack, given that maybe he was malformed by abuse he himself suffered, and I can live with that. Maybe some of us are wired in a way that we simply can't find compassion under the anger. Ultimately, I think self-compassion dictates that I not beat myself up over it. However, having said all that, if my anger one day magically disappears and compassion for him knocks on the door, I'll not hesitate to let it in.

For what it's worth, I'm very compassionate in other parts of my life. So it's not like I'm incapable of that... I'm actually quite the bleeding heart!

Welcome to the forum!  :heythere:

Three Roses

My abusers were all damaged people. I was raised in violence, minimization, danger and abuse because they did not have any healing. It was different times, back then. There wasn't the awareness that there is today.

But I still knew that what had been done to me was wrong. After having children and learning about parenting, I have done all that I could (sometimes failing) to not let my past abuse in turn make me abusive to others. My abusers did not do that.

I have forgiven them, tho. But forgiveness does not require connection. Grace does not require keeping ties with people who continue to harm me, whether or not it is intentional.